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Baryulgil, New South Wales 1980

I lived on an Aboriginal Reserve near Grafton. I was camping with my friend and her family at Baryulgil (North West of Grafton).

We had gone up to an old one walled cattle shelter to set up an old tent that had an open back and front, and it had been raining. The parents had their tent closer to the river.

One of the girls had dropped her torch and the batteries fell out because the case wouldn’t close properly. The dog started to become quite agitated, barking, growling and afraid. He ran into the tent and we were all trying to grab him to settle him down (in the dark), and I said can you get him away from me, he keeps touching my back and she said ‘No, I have him over here’. We bumbled away trying to get the batteries back into the torch and the girl turned it on and shone it behind me, and there was some kind of creature and it had massive hairy legs. We all started screaming and the dog was wailing and going crazy. We were shocked and terrified.

We had to sleep in the parent’s tent after that. They thought were had imagined it and were overreacting.

The next morning, the two men who were at the campsite went back to where we had our tent to get our belongings because we wouldn’t go back up there. It had been raining and they found a massive footprint, like nothing they’d ever seen.

Later the local Aboriginals came down and told us stories about the area and how is was Yowie country. They told us stories about the Yowies.